October 2026

Hello,

The question comes up every so often:

Is it better to write by hand or type on a keyboard?

As with many things in life, there are advantages and disadvantages to each method.

We think faster than we can write and many of us type faster than we can write by hand.

Why I prefer typing

Legibility. I can’t always read what I write by hand, especially when I write fast to try and capture my thoughts.

Also, I like being able to immediately delete and retype.

On the other hand . . .

Why Writing by Hand is important

Audrey van der Meer, a Norwegian neuroscientist, spent 20 years proving that writing by hand changes the human brain in ways typing cannot.

She recruited university students and put caps on each one with sensors to record brain activity. Sometimes the students wrote by hand and sometimes they typed on a keyboard. Her team discovered when the students wrote by hand, their brains lit up everywhere at once.

The regions responsible for memory, sensory integration, and the encoding of new information were all firing together in a coordinated pattern that spread across the entire cortex. The whole network was awake and connected.

When the same students typed the same words, that pattern collapsed almost completely. Most of the brain went quiet, and the connections between regions that had been alive seconds earlier were nowhere to be found on the EEG.

“Writing by hand is not one motion but a sequence of thousands of tiny micro-movements coordinated with your eyes in real time, where each letter requires the brain to solve a slightly different spatial problem. Fingers, wrist, vision, and the parts of the brain that track position in space work together to produce one letter, then the next, then the next.”

If you want to take a deep dive and read the study findings:

Source: “Handwriting but not typewriting leads to widespread brain connectivity: a high-density EEG study with implications for the classroom,” Fronters in Psychology, January 25, 2024

Dinty Moore on pen/paper versus computer

“Handwriting lets you make associations between your body and what you are seeing and hearing, offering the mind more footholds for accessing a memory or idea. Hands are directly connected to heart by blood vessels.”  Dinty Moore, July 8, 2026 webinar.

Craft Talks On Writers & Writing: Webinars and Masterclasses about the craft and business of writing.

Suggestion: Do some of both!

Because typing is efficient and because who doesn’t want their brain fired up!

Speaking of igniting brain . . .

Sonoma County Writers Conference

Hosted by Redwood Writers, a branch of the California Writers Club.

October 17,8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

Finley Community Center, Santa Rosa

Register, Schedule, and Presenters

Just Write!

Marlene

mcullen (at) sonic.net